As a matter of fact, when the seine-maker was a rich man he gave his two sons a farmstead each. The elder son wasted his substance in much the same way as Ol' Bengtsa himself had done, and died poor. The younger son, who was the more steady and reliable, kept his portion and even increased it, so that now he was quite well-to-do. But what he owned at the present time was as nothing to what he might have had if his father had not recklessly made away with both money and lands, to no purpose whatever. If such wealth had only come into the hands of the son in his younger days, there is no telling to what he might have attained. He could have been owner of all the woodlands in the Lovsjö district, had a shop at Broby, and a steamer plying Lake Löven; he might even have been master of the ironworks at Ekeby. Naturally he found it difficult to excuse the father's careless business methods, but he kept his thoughts to himself.
When the crash came for Ol' Bengtsa, a good many persons, Bengtsa among them, expected the son to come to his aid by the sacrifice of his own property. But what good would that have done? It would only have gone to the creditors. It was with the idea in mind that the father should have something to fall back upon when all his possessions were gone, that the son had held on to his own.
It was not the fault of the younger son that Ol' Bengtsa had taken up his abode with the widow of the elder son, for he had begged the father more than a hundred times to come and live with him. The father's refusal to accept this offer seemed almost like an act of injustice; for because of it the son got the name of being mean and hard-hearted among those who knew the old man was badly off. Still, there was no ill-feeling between the two.
The son, accompanied by his wife and children, always drove down to the Ashdales over the steep and perilous mountain road once every summer, just to spend a day with his father.
If people had only known how badly he and his wife felt every time they saw the wretched hovel, the ramshackle outhouse, the stony potato patch, and the sister-in-law's ragged children, they would have understood how his heart went out to his father. The worst of all was that the father persisted in giving a big party in their honour. Every time they bade the old man good-bye they begged him not to invite all the neighbours in when they came again the next year; but he was obdurate; he would not forego his yearly feast, though he could ill afford the expense. Seeing how aged and broken he looked, one would hardly have thought there was so much of the old happy-go-lucky Ol' Bengtsa of Lusterby still left in him, but the desire to do things on a grand scale still clung to him. It had caused him misfortune from which he could never recover.
The son had learned inadvertently that the old man and the sister-in-law scrimped the whole year just to be able to give a grand spread on the day he was at home. And then it was nothing but eat, eat the whole time! He and his family were hardly out of the wagon before they were served with coffee and all kinds of tempting appetizers. And later came the dinner to all the neighbours with a fish course, a meat course, and game, and rice-cakes, and fruit-mold with whipped cream, and quantities of wines and spirits. It was enough to make one weep! He and his wife did nothing to encourage this foolishness. On the contrary, they brought with them only such plain fare as they were accustomed to have every day; but for all that they could not escape the feasting. Sometimes they felt that rather than let the old man ruin himself on their account they might better remain away altogether. Yet they feared to do so, lest their good intentions should be misinterpreted.
And what a strange company they were thrown in with at these Parties—old blacksmiths and fishermen and backwoodsmen! If such good, substantial folk as the Falla family had not been in the habit of coming, too, there would have been no one there with whom they could have exchanged a word.
Ol' Bengtsa's son had liked the late Eric of Falla best, but he also entertained in a high regard for Lars Gunnarson, the present master of Falla. Lars Gunnarson came of rather obscure people, but he was a man who had the good sense to marry well, and who would doubtless forge ahead and gain for himself both wealth and position. When the old man told his son that Lars Gunnarson was not likely to come to the party this year, the latter was very much disappointed.
"But it's no fault of mine," Ol' Bengsta declared. "Lars isn't exactly my kind, but all the same, on your account, I went down to Falla yesterday and invited him."
"Maybe he's weary of these parties," said the son.